RolandForbes

How do you know the difference between a skydiver and a speed flyer? A skydiver has a sore back, a speed flyer has a bionic one!

Ive heard the same number of 500 per day on a busy day. Granted that information came from a drunken asshat of a TI who recently got caught drinking on the job so who knows

Bring a first time jumper to sacrifice to the tandem gods, and you get a dollar off!

Will objects be limited to avoiding earth/span, or will it also include flaming tennis balls?

Lololol ^. The heavier a canopy is loaded, the more likely it is to dive in line twists.

You sir, are an absolute savage lol. Sounds like you'd be a good AFF IE

Gotta love that subterminal track. Thats awesome though that ramp must have taken forever to setup!

The fact that you have a good healthy fear of skydiving probably means you'll end up being quite good at it. I was in the same boat though too man. Had to ride down my first few static line jumps because of fear, now I'm most of the way towards 1000 jumps. I'd suggest you push through these early days, what awaits you on the other side is so much bigger than a couple sweaty palm 182 rides.

Agreed Bluhdow, however the same pattern can be seen in a multitude of other sports. Taller swimmers tend to be faster, because their drag to power output ratio is smaller. Taller runners have longer glide, taller rowers have longer range. These are well documented phenomenon in a few different sports. I think it all comes back to the idea that volume and surface area do not scale in unison. As bodies become larger, they have less surface area relative to their volume. I dont see why this theory would be different for wingsuit flying, I mean were cruising through a fluid, just like swimmers do. But yes, sorry for the dum science rant. You are correct that in real world conditions, skill is the only thing that really matters! I can still flatspin on my back no matter what my weight lol

@kleggo very interesting. I'd argue any single race is too small of an N to reliably reference for normalized data. Would be interested to know the body size/experience level of him vs his competitors. Interesting point though for sure

Glide is a variable thats (mostly) independent of wing size, so theoretically a 5'7 pilot will have the same average glide a 6'6 pilot (because arm size is fixed to height). What gives the taller pilot more range is the fact that they have more mass, and more mass means faster freefall. With this in mind: Airspeed * 2 == availableLift * 4 ^ double your airspeed, quadruple your lift The heavier pilot will be able to take their suit faster than a light pilot, thus resulting in much more available lift, higher max speed, bigger potential flares, etc. So moral of the story is, if you're short and wanna out fly your buddies, just put some sand bags in your legwing!

Yes certainly. Its no coincidence that most national level wingsuit performance comps are won by guys who are tall and lean. Same reason being tall as a TI is the shit. Taller TIs have more surface area to fly their students, thus making it a bit easier to maintain stability in tandem freefall

Id assume its for similar reasons that static line BASE jumps yield a lower off heading rate than handheld or stowed.. Would be interested as to the physics behind it but it seems removing PC oscillation may be a factor?

Thanks for posting!

Lol such hypocrisy that they allow 'special Red Bull jumpers' to do this, but not anyone else. Do as I say, not as I do..... Am I back in Catholic school? I personally feel that minimum opening altitudes should fall entirely in the purvue of the S&TA. They're the boots on the ground, they should have final word when it comes to enforcing (or not enforcing) minimum opening requirements. S&TA's are an order of magnitude more important than the USPA, and should be treated as such. USPA sends you a really shitty magazine once a month, S&TAs derive and define safety culture, give you advice, help you get to new milestones/ratings etc (oh and watches you on every jump to make sure you're not going to kill yourself or your fellow jumpers) just to name a few The engrained nature of the S&TA makes them much more knowledgable of which jumpers need minimum opening altitudes. For example at our DZ, all wingsuit flyers with less than 100 flights must open by 5k. That's an S&TA imposed rule that largely has benefitted us, and something that in our jump culture likely has prevented at least a few sketchy situations.